TOS' U.S.S. Valiant and Farragut....

Warped9, I'd really love to see some other views of your Farragut and Valiant designs; I'd love to do some 3d models of them. I'd love to see some views of what they look like from the bottom and behind, too. Do you mind if I play around with something like what you've got there?

Warped9, I'd really love to see some other views of your Farragut and Valiant designs; I'd love to do some 3d models of them. I'd love to see some views of what they look like from the bottom and behind, too. Do you mind if I play around with something like what you've got there?

Guy Hoyle

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If what you mean is "mind if I make a 3D version of this," I'll just chime in that I'd love to see Warped9's stuff converted into 3D as well, and while I keep hoping he'll apply that sense of visual style into the whole "virtually real" realm in 3D, it makes sense to me for people to choose their areas to focus on.

So, if he's not gonna do it, and if you're prepared to be "faithful" to his imagery, I'll just say that I, personally, would love to see this done.

Cary, I'll try to be as faithful as I can, but really, I only have a few pics to go by at this point; I don't know what a lot of the ships look like. Unless Warped9 can share some views of other parts of the ship, I'm not sure how faithful I can be, but I think I'll start on my own version of his ship. Fair enough?

Whether they are rings or nacelles, I see them as negative energy induction circuits that act as an antigravity "blanket" around the ship, protecting it from being crushed out of existence by hypergravity singularities fore and aft that create and extinguish what in effect is I guess, something like a stable wormhole. In the case of the 1701 nacelles, these singularities are contained in the domes forward and aft.

Obviously this changes dramatically with the TMP nacelles. We can discuss that subject some other time, if you like.

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I like your thinking on the nacelle evolution; in TOS, the nacelles were always kind of big "rockets" that pushed the ship so fast that it was able to break the "time barrier" and travel faster than light. Apparently impulse engines could also push you to at least lightspeed (if you watch episodes like "The Doomsday Machine"), but since they weren't run off of the matter/antimatter reactors it took more fuel and wasn't as economical as the m/a reactors.

By the time of TMP and "warp cores" (which replaced the various warp reactors on starships), apparently the nacelles were more like giant emitters rather than giant rockets - in this case, emitting a field that "warped" space rather than just going really really fast to break the "time barrier." That's why they don't really have a front or a back, and just glow blue (emitting the warping field) on the sides when travelling faster than light.

That's just going by TOS tech, though - the later shows developed their own explanation(s) for warp travel. As for the Phoenix...well, B&B really didn't put a whole lot of thought into that, apparently, so I just exclude the whole fiasco.

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Doesn't that go against what Roddenberry told Matt Jeffries regarding the fact that he doesn't want the ship to be a rocket ship.

I've watched every episode of TOS many times over the past 22 years since I became a fan and I've never understood the nacelles to be anything remotely rocket-like.

I mean... I built the Enterprise out of Legos as a 10-year-old (I'm 30, now) and I never thought of the nacelles as rockets.

In my design of the quite early, mid-21st century Bonaventure, the warp drive is the ring combined with the domes at the front and back of the ship. They are roughly equivalent to the coils in a nacelle (the ring is one coil) and the domes on the front and back of the nacelle. The ship is like one, big simplified nacelle with a small habitation area inside.

The things that look like nacelles are really the sublight drive. They are antimatter fusion rockets, so one could see how they might look kinda like nacelles. But they only look like nacelles -- functionally, they are what on later ships would be the impulse drive.

Doesn't that go against what Roddenberry told Matt Jeffries regarding the fact that he doesn't want the ship to be a rocket ship.

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Not really; Roddenberry said that he didn't want it to LOOK like a rocket ship or flying saucer (despite the fact that they ended up using the design with the saucer anyway), but he didn't say that it couldn't have rockets. And the nacelles weren't "rockets," per se, they just operated in the same manner (force is ejected out the back to create forward motion). That's why the nacelles don't glow on the sides, and they have "ends" on them for the warp thrust.

But that's just the TOS tech, which was obviously ret-conned by future shows (if you count them as canon).

3D versions of my designs have been done before and I don't mind as long as credit is acknowledged.

My situation is while I'd love to do 3D models myself I just don't have the skills. I can draw and draft in the oldfashioned 2D way either with pencils and drafting instruments or on the computer with Illustrator. I can draw perspectives. But I'm lacking in 3D skills and it's a steep learning curve.

Somebody around here expressed interest in rendering my TOS shuttlecraft drawings in 3D and that I'd like to see. Evenetually I'll get my TAS shuttlecraft versions done and those would also be cool in 3D.

Presenetly I'm focusing more on my own non-Trek designs which will also be rendered in 3D when ready.

3D versions of my designs have been done before and I don't mind as long as credit is acknowledged.

My situation is while I'd love to do 3D models myself I just don't have the skills. I can draw and draft in the oldfashioned 2D way either with pencils and drafting instruments or on the computer with Illustrator. I can draw perspectives. But I'm lacking in 3D skills and it's a steep learning curve.

Somebody around here expressed interest in rendering my TOS shuttlecraft drawings in 3D and that I'd like to see. Evenetually I'll get my TAS shuttlecraft versions done and those would also be cool in 3D.

Presenetly I'm focusing more on my own non-Trek designs which will also be rendered in 3D when ready.

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Actually, I'm that "somebody." I started on it, then let it sit when I really started getting into the 1701... I now think of this as part of the whole 1701 model I'm doing (much as I think of the turbolift car I developed for it). Since all my work is in "full scale," the only real issue is how many polygons I want in a rendered scene... and that's not really an issue even for a 32-bit system (it's the purely-math-based geometry that's the system killer, and by comparison, polygon-surface-based stuff is really trivial in terms of system resources!)

Never fear... I WILL finish that shuttlecraft version. But I really want to get the 1701 proper done first. And with what's essentially 4X the computing power (12GB versus 3GB, and 8 cores versus 2 cores) I should have no trouble making it happen.

Doesn't that go against what Roddenberry told Matt Jeffries regarding the fact that he doesn't want the ship to be a rocket ship.

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Not really; Roddenberry said that he didn't want it to LOOK like a rocket ship or flying saucer (despite the fact that they ended up using the design with the saucer anyway), but he didn't say that it couldn't have rockets. And the nacelles weren't "rockets," per se, they just operated in the same manner (force is ejected out the back to create forward motion). That's why the nacelles don't glow on the sides, and they have "ends" on them for the warp thrust.

But that's just the TOS tech, which was obviously ret-conned by future shows (if you count them as canon).

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I don't think so. Even in the 60's they knew it was impossible to go faster than light under Newtonian thrust. Even the name "warp drive" implies its a field drive, not a rocket.

My apologies to Cary L. Brown. I did not mean to minimize your interest. It's just that for the moment I was posting a response I forgot who it was that was interested in rendering my version of the TOS shuttlecraft.

The external differences between the fullsize mockup of the shuttlecraft seen onscreen and my drawings are very subtle and they were meant to be. The most obvious difference is that the fullsize mockup had an exaggerated pitched forward stance that emphasized a forced perspective appearance onscreen when viewed from a side or rear angle. My version moderated that pitched forward look by making the lower line of the stabilizer rim parallel with the nacelle centerlines while maintaining the wedged shape of the craft.

I don't think so. Even in the 60's they knew it was impossible to go faster than light under Newtonian thrust. Even the name "warp drive" implies its a field drive, not a rocket.

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Well, there are theories to either effect to whether or not it's impossible to go faster than light under Newtonian thrust...although the time dilation effect due to speed under Einstein's relativity has proved itself true in some cases, it's still open to debate (a debate I hope to avoid in this thread...).

Warp drive doesn't really imply a field...Matt Jefferies famously said "What the hell is warp drive?" when Roddenberry told him how the Enterprise went faster than light, and I'm sure he had "warp drive" in mind when he developed the nacelles. Even so, they're obviously not field emitters and have a distinct front and back.

Maybe if you want to stick with the "field" idea, you could say that the field is created behind the ship by the ends of the nacelles, like the engines in Star Trek 2009 seem to do.

I don't think so. Even in the 60's they knew it was impossible to go faster than light under Newtonian thrust. Even the name "warp drive" implies its a field drive, not a rocket.

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Well, there are theories to either effect to whether or not it's impossible to go faster than light under Newtonian thrust...although the time dilation effect due to speed under Einstein's relativity has proved itself true in some cases, it's still open to debate (a debate I hope to avoid in this thread...).

Warp drive doesn't really imply a field...Matt Jefferies famously said "What the hell is warp drive?" when Roddenberry told him how the Enterprise went faster than light, and I'm sure he had "warp drive" in mind when he developed the nacelles. Even so, they're obviously not field emitters and have a distinct front and back.

Maybe if you want to stick with the "field" idea, you could say that the field is created behind the ship by the ends of the nacelles, like the engines in Star Trek 2009 seem to do.

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Just because the nacelles vaguely resemble rockets doesn't mean they have to function like them. They are linear in design and have a front and back because they warp the fabric of space from front to back - compressing it ahead of the ship and expanding it behind. They were never seen emitting any kind of thrust propellant whatsoever. Hell, even one of the screens on the bridge was a gauge for measuring the "warp field".

I'm glad you want to avoid a scientific debate on the possibility of FTL speeds and lack of time dilation under rocket propulsion. Respectfully... you'd lose.

I don't think so. Even in the 60's they knew it was impossible to go faster than light under Newtonian thrust. Even the name "warp drive" implies its a field drive, not a rocket.

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Well, there are theories to either effect to whether or not it's impossible to go faster than light under Newtonian thrust...although the time dilation effect due to speed under Einstein's relativity has proved itself true in some cases, it's still open to debate (a debate I hope to avoid in this thread...).

Warp drive doesn't really imply a field...Matt Jefferies famously said "What the hell is warp drive?" when Roddenberry told him how the Enterprise went faster than light, and I'm sure he had "warp drive" in mind when he developed the nacelles. Even so, they're obviously not field emitters and have a distinct front and back.

Maybe if you want to stick with the "field" idea, you could say that the field is created behind the ship by the ends of the nacelles, like the engines in Star Trek 2009 seem to do.

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Just because the nacelles vaguely resemble rockets doesn't mean they have to function like them. They are linear in design and have a front and back because they warp the fabric of space from front to back - compressing it ahead of the ship and expanding it behind. They were never seen emitting any kind of thrust propellant whatsoever. Hell, even one of the screens on the bridge was a gauge for measuring the "warp field".

I'm glad you want to avoid a scientific debate on the possibility of FTL speeds and lack of time dilation under rocket propulsion. Respectfully... you'd lose.

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Juan, that's not really a very good attitude, especially since "warp drive" is NEITHER OF THE ABOVE, as it's established in the show.

It's not a "field drive." There are hypothetical "field drive" concepts out there... electromagnetic drives, for instance, or even "gravity drives." These are engines which produce a field which then interacts with some other (naturally-occurring) field to create an acceleration. THAT is a "field drive."

Oh, and such a drive is still Newtonian, and subject to all the pitfalls therein.

TOS Purist is ABSOLUTELY RIGHT when he says that "Warp drive doesn't really imply a field...Matt Jefferies famously said "What the hell is warp drive?" when Roddenberry told him how the Enterprise went faster than light, and I'm sure he had "warp drive" in mind when he developed the nacelles."

And he's also ABSOLUTELY RIGHT when he states that "they're obviously not field emitters and have a distinct front and back."

It seems you don't "get" that because you don't understand what a "field" is. You seem to think, as many sci-fi fans who confuse technobabblish terms with real science do, that "field" is just a term for "pseudo-magic sci-fi stuff." But, of course, it's not so. There are really two types of fields.

Fields can be "directional fields" such as the magnetic field lines between adjacent north and south poles, but that can only exist when there's a "return path" for the field. All fields of this nature are inherently "circular" in nature.

Or they can be "static" fields, indicating some localized potential energy difference between the region where the "field" is defined and the "outside of the field" region.

But any "static field" generated by a ship... non-directional as it would be... would provide no propulsive energy of any kind. And any "directional field" in a closed system (and a ship which is in deep space is, by itself, effectively a closed system, not interacting with, for instance, the field of a nearby star or planet) must have a circulating "flow" (such as what you see in the electromagnetic field around a transformer).

No, "warp drive" is by no stretch of the imagination a "field drive." It's something else entirely.

You could have a sublight "field drive" but... and this will just piss you off, I'm sure... a "field drive" will be every bit as much subject to Newtonian effects as a "rocket drive" will be. ANYTHING in normal space/time will be.

So, if you're going to act like you're smarter than someone else, brag and belittle and all that horseshit, you really ought to make sure that you're not just talking out of your ass.

We can talk about "warp drive" all we want... but it doesn't exist. It's FICTIONAL. It's a storytelling conceit, and that's ALL it is. We don't know if such a thing is remotely possible in reality. And EVERYTHING in the world we know is subject to the laws of physics as we know them, without exception.

It doesn't matter if you accelerate due to a field interaction, or due to expulsion of mass. You're still accelerating, and you're still subject to relativistic effects. Anything else, no matter how convenient for storytelling, is nothing more or less than "make-believe."

And TOS Purist's quote from MJ - "What the hell is warp drive?" - has only one answer. It's storytelling magic.

Juan, that's not really a very good attitude, especially since "warp drive" is NEITHER OF THE ABOVE, as it's established in the show.

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Really? Where?

Oh, and such a drive is still Newtonian, and subject to all the pitfalls therein.

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No, I don't think you're at all correct in this.

And he's also ABSOLUTELY RIGHT when he states that "they're obviously not field emitters and have a distinct front and back."

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Again, how?

It seems you don't "get" that because you don't understand what a "field" is.

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I understand quite well what a "field" is, thank you very much.

No, "warp drive" is by no stretch of the imagination a "field drive." It's something else entirely.

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I don't agree.

You could have a sublight "field drive" but... and this will just piss you off, I'm sure... a "field drive" will be every bit as much subject to Newtonian effects as a "rocket drive" will be. ANYTHING in normal space/time will be.

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Yes, you could indeed have a sublight field drive, and no it doesn't piss me off. Based on its effects I believe that this is what impulse must be. The trick with warp drive is that it sets up a bubble of normal space/time in which the ship rests and warps the space around it.

So, if you're going to act like you're smarter than someone else, brag and belittle and all that horseshit, you really ought to make sure that you're not just talking out of your ass.

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I was niether bragging nor belittling, so get your facts straight before you come charging in on your white horse there, Prince Valiant. If anything I was heaping scorn on the inexcusably silly idea that Newtonian thrust alone could propel a starship faster than the speed of light, which seemed to be what TOS Purist was implying. Not heaping scorn on TOS Purist himself. Now if I'm wrong about that, then I apologize. To him.

It doesn't matter if you accelerate due to a field interaction, or due to expulsion of mass. You're still accelerating, and you're still subject to relativistic effects.

It doesn't matter if you accelerate due to a field interaction, or due to expulsion of mass. You're still accelerating, and you're still subject to relativistic effects. Anything else, no matter how convenient for storytelling, is nothing more or less than "make-believe."

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I've always understood it to be a compression of space fore of the vessel and expansion aft, like Juan said. Thus, neither of your Newtonian scenarios fit. You don't have multiple fields interacting but rather space itself changing dimensions, thus allowing the ship traveling at sublight within the confines of the dimension changed space to appear to travel faster than light since the surrounding space hasn't changed dimensions.

Warp drive is all about perspective. It's like if you take a tablecloth and scrunched up the left hand side but left the right hand side fully extended across the table. Take two Matchbox cars and have them travel from one end of the tablecloth to the other on each side at the same rate of speed. While both cars travel over the same amount of cloth, the car on the left side gets from one end to the other more quickly due to the tablecloth being scrunched up.

Now that's an obvious oversimplification of my understanding of it, but it gets the point across. A ship traveling at warp doesn't compress all of space as such but manipulates it as it travels via a subspace field.

It's kinda like you're not really traveling faster than light but rather shortening the distance that you have to travel. It just seems like you're traveling faster than light because light itself can't shorten the distance it has to travel.

It doesn't matter if you accelerate due to a field interaction, or due to expulsion of mass. You're still accelerating, and you're still subject to relativistic effects. Anything else, no matter how convenient for storytelling, is nothing more or less than "make-believe."

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I've always understood it to be a compression of space fore of the vessel and expansion aft, like Juan said. Thus, neither of your Newtonian scenarios fit. You don't have multiple fields interacting but rather space itself changing dimensions, thus allowing the ship traveling at sublight within the confines of the dimension changed space to appear to travel faster than light since the surrounding space hasn't changed dimensions.

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That's exactly my point. "Warp drive" isn't a "field drive." It's something else entirely. Warp drive is "none of the above." A "field drive" is still a Newtonian system. It just creates acceleration through the interaction of two fields (one internally generated, one external and, almost always, natural), rather than through expulsion of highly-accelerated mass.

Warp drive is something else entirely. It's just "warp drive," not a subclass of some other category.

Warp drive is all about perspective. It's like if you take a tablecloth and scrunched up the left hand side but left the right hand side fully extended across the table. Take two Matchbox cars and have them travel from one end of the tablecloth to the other on each side at the same rate of speed. While both cars travel over the same amount of cloth, the car on the left side gets from one end to the other more quickly due to the tablecloth being scrunched up.

Now that's an obvious oversimplification of my understanding of it, but it gets the point across. A ship traveling at warp doesn't compress all of space as such but manipulates it as it travels via a subspace field.

It's kinda like you're not really traveling faster than light but rather shortening the distance that you have to travel. It just seems like you're traveling faster than light because light itself can't shorten the distance it has to travel.

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That's a fairly good explanation of how my hypothetical "FTL impulse" would work... albeit that everything is based upon local frame-of-reference. You might say that the "local speed of light is greater, relative to 'real space/time'." But, by the same argument, you might say that "real space/time is compressed, relative to your local frame of reference." So a Newtonian propulsion system becomes plausible for interstellar travel, because the distances your "sublight," Newtonian system requires you to move are (effectively) tremendously reduced.

But "warp drive" isn't even like that. It's not about "shortening the effective distance between two points" or "increasing the effective speed of light" or anything like that. The best way to describe "warp drive" is that you're creating a wave in the fabric of the universe, and "surfing on subspace."

Here are a couple of new things for my chronology that I thought folks in this forum might like.

The first image is my take on the Valiant that's lost at Eminiar 7 in "A Taste Of Armeggedon." The second image is a work-in-progress of my idea of the Farragut referenced in "Obsession." There's about forty years between the two events and I wanted to show some idea of evolution in design from the Valiant to the Farragut to the Enterprise.

The Farragut design has something of that TOS look I think while still not being a reuse of the familiar design. The ship is supposed to be about 3/4 of the size of a Constitution-class.

For the Farragut I still have to add extra detail: surface detail, windows, running lights, markings, whatever else I can think of. I elected to go with a new design extrapolated from an early MJ sketch rather than use the Surya type frigate which had been my initial idea.